81 - Keeping Heart: Be, Do, Have
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
Keeping Heart, by Dr Chip Dodd is written in short sections; each section focuses on some dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness. It can be used as a daily form of orienting yourself for the day ahead of you or a book to read cover to cover.
Visit chipdodd.com to download a free resource that describes The Spiritual Root System. This resource identifies each “root” of how we are created as feeling, needing, desiring, longing, hoping people who seek to live fully in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.
To read a short encapsulation of episode #81, go to pages 28-29 of Keeping Heart.
We are created to BE, DO, and HAVE
In order to live fully, love deeply, and lead well lives that leave behind good legacy, we must:
admit that we don’t control how life works.
we don’t have power to change how we are created as relational creatures.
We only find fulfillment by living fully in relationship with
ourselves
others
God
(The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd)
Surrendering to the process of how we are created occurs through three developmental movements:
Being - who we are created to be as relational creatures. We are created 99.9% like everyone else on an emotional and spiritual level. We seek connection through feeling, needing, desiring, longing, and hoping. We are created to respond to life accordingly.
Doing - what we are created to do by participating in the actions of producing, shaping, making and caring about creating “good.” We take action in daily life by using our internal awareness; we are “response-able.”
Having - what we are created to experience if we live according to how we are created. We have relationships, connection, provision, bounty, and prosperity. We risk giving ourselves to and attaining the experiences of life that create relational and experiential fulfillments.
Be-Do-Have vs Do-Have-Become
If a person is raised in an environment that diminishes his/her essential makeup and places too much emphasis on performance in order to be accepted, the person’s worth becomes wrapped up in the constant need for approval of others and in competition with others.
This environment creates a culture of Do-Have-Become in order to have value and “be somebody.”
The trap in this mistaken belief system is that one can Do enough and Have enough that they will be regarded as someone of significant worth compared to others—Become enough:
Do is based on the mistaken belief that if I invest enough, study enough, work hard enough, and achieve enough, I will be recognized as significant and/or superior. My worth will be assured.
Have refers to the results of performing at a level that separates a person from others, whether it be through material goods, financial gains, or notoriety.
Become is the effect of having achieved a sense of worth because of earning it, through the approval of others—either through their acceptance or, ironically, through their envy.
We are created to live in a culture of Be-Do-Have. We are NOT created to live life in a Do-Have-Be culture:
Inherent in Being is the inborn ability to respond with our internal makeup and expression. “Response-ability” is the original meaning of responsibility. We all hope for ourselves and others to have the capacity to be responsible.
Once we lose the capacity for “response-ability,” we become reactive rather than responsive.
Response is action that is initiated through one’s own internal makeup. On the other hand, reaction is an action that occurs after someone else initiates.
People who lose connection to their internal “response-ability” develop the defensive posture of re-action. This person’s actions are based upon the actions of others.
Response-oriented people trust their inborn makeup and behave accordingly. Their Be is true to their makeup, and their Do behaviors are congruent with “who” they are.
Reactive-oriented people do not trust their inborn makeup and take action to cover up their feelings and needs in order to avoid vulnerability or exposure which could lead to feelings of toxic shame or some other form of pain.
People stuck in the Do-Have-Be mold are controlled by the pursuit of attempting to prove that they have self-worth, something that they already had at birth.
Jesus exhorts us to follow the path of Be-Do-Have in Matthew 6:33 when he asks us to consider how God takes care of His creation and cares for us by providing what we need. Jesus tells us to make provision secondary to God who created us and how we are created:
“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Matthew 6:33 (NIV)
This Scripture points us toward recognizing ourselves as God-made, and we are created to bravely live accordingly; out of being who we are made to be and doing what we are made to do, we will have what we are created to have. This is a promise from God.
The process of Be-Do-Have will gift us with several benefits:
True friends: people who share our pains and celebrate our joys, giving us the security of genuine relationships
Trust in God and others who we know care about us.
The experience of knowing that we are never alone—even when alone.
A “heart” that can struggle with life on life’s terms, which can often be very painful, if not tragic.
The ability to “keep heart” because we are living on the path of how we are created.
The Be-Do-Have path moves us to humbly continue to learn how to live fully, love deeply, and lead well lives that leave good things behind us.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center